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7921. Ms. No - 10/31/2005 9:19:45 PM Yeah, I was disappointed in the latest book....but I'm looking forward to the new film! I hope it's as good as the last one. 7922. PelleNilsson - 11/2/2005 7:10:21 PM As Macnas informed us a while ago this year's Booker price was awarded to John Banville for his novel The Sea.
NYT book critic Michiko Katunami is totally pissed off. Excerpts:
The judges last month awarded the prize to John Banville's novel "The Sea" - a stilted, claustrophobic and numbingly pretentious tale about an aging widower revisting his past.
Max talks like someone with a thesaurus permanently implanted in his brain: his monologue is studded with words like "leporine," "strangury," "perpetuance," "finical," "flocculent," "anthropic," "avrilaceous," "anaglypta" and "assegais." Perhaps Max's grandiose language is meant to signify some sort of psychic defense mechanism on his part, but it's uncannily similar to the language employed by characters in Banville's earlier books.
Equally irritating is Max's penchant for describing and redescribing everyone in his life and everything he sees in minute physical detail that radiates a prissy disgust for the human body. He describes his daughter's "upper gums, glistening and whitely pink." He describes Mrs. Grace's "haunches quivering under the light stuff of her summer dresses." And he describes Chloe's teeth as possessing a "delicate damp grey-green" tinge "like the damp light under trees after rain." Of his own appearance, he observes: "This morning it was the state of my eyes that struck me most forcibly, the whites all craquelured over with those tiny bright-red veins and the moist lower lids inflamed and hanging a little way loose of the eyeballs."
'The Sea' washes ashore, lifeless 7923. jayackroyd - 11/2/2005 7:38:25 PM Kakutani.
Her father is the guy who came up with the Kakutani fixed point theorem.
On Harry, I haven't found a copy lying around yet, so I haven't read it. But it's not surprising that it got to be hard to sustain the story. Series almost always decline. It's surprising that it kept building. My biggest disappointment was the third volume of the Pullman trilogy.
Although not Kai Meyer's Dark Reflections series. I've read the second one in manuscript, and it's better than The Water Mirror. Gene Wolfe get better, too.
But if I see another one of those Orson Scott Card Ender books, I'll scream.
7924. Magoseph - 11/2/2005 7:49:22 PM His Love of Words Rivals His Contempt for Critics
Excerpt: Not everyone was thrilled by the decision last month to give the Man Booker Prize, Britain's most influential literary award, to "The Sea" by the Irish novelist John Banville. To begin with, two of the five Booker judges vehemently preferred another book, Kazuo Ishiguro's "Never Let Me Go."
Meanwhile, booksellers at the prize dinner grumbled that the novel was the least commercial of the six finalists (only 3,721 hardback copies had been sold before Booker night on Oct. 10; the total has since risen to just over 9,100). Mr. Banville subsequently appeared on a radio arts program with three critics, who all, he said, hated his book.
But all this is grist for the mill to the author himself, who seems to relish a good literary dust-up, or at least not to mind being at the center of one.
"Frankly, I am gratified to see myself vilified, and the jury being vilified," he said happily over lunch recently. "It cheers me up. I must have done something right to annoy so many people." 7925. PelleNilsson - 11/2/2005 8:08:11 PM Thus, convex-valuedness is instrumental.
I'm sure we all agree with that crucial insight. 7926. Ms. No - 11/2/2005 8:24:18 PM Jay,
I've read several of OSC's books but did not begin the Enders' series. I actually meant to, it seemed to be quite popular, but I became a bit disenchanted with Card before I got to it and so never picked it up. Now maybe I'm glad. ;-> 7927. jayackroyd - 11/2/2005 8:46:09 PM Thus, convex-valuedness is instrumental.
The Sea washes ashore, lifeless.
I'd say the apple didn't fall too far from the tree. 7928. jayackroyd - 11/2/2005 8:47:30 PM Ender's Game is actually very good, and I think well of the next two as well. Xenocide and something I can't remember.
Sappy, though. 7929. Ms. No - 11/2/2005 8:56:29 PM Yes, well, Card is a bit sappy. I admired him for giving me my first real and positive glance at Mormonism in a book I can't recall the title of at the moment. Might've been Lost Boys or maybe not. I had good luck with a couple of his others but then it all fell apart for me. Treasure Box was nearly a total loss. 7930. judithathome - 11/14/2005 8:45:26 PM An article by John Updike:
Determined Spirit 7931. uzmakk - 11/22/2005 10:09:18 PM I saw the 60minutes segment on Bono and U2 last Sunday. Has U2 made any truly memorable music? I don't think I know any U2 songs, therefore I don't hum or whistle them. They are not gentle on my mind. 7932. judithathome - 11/22/2005 11:36:36 PM I have no idea what sort of music thay make...but your last sentence brought a very unwelcome memory of Glenn Campbell to mind...ha!
I loved John Hartford's lyrics but hated Campbell. 7933. arkymalarky - 11/23/2005 1:29:28 AM Hey, I loved Campbell. And his guitar playing is superb.
Uzz--I didn't like U2 for a long time, but they've grown on me over the years. The only album I have is the Joshua Tree, and it's very nice. There are a handful of other songs of theirs that are really fine, imo. A lot of the music on that album would sound familiar to you, I bet. Bono's really been effective with his advocacy. I read a long interview in Rolling Stone a few days ago. 7934. judithathome - 11/23/2005 9:59:28 PM Not bashing Campbell's talent but he was a piss poor human being and was a real shit to his first wife and daughter. 7935. arkymalarky - 11/23/2005 11:20:22 PM Oh yes. And it looked for a while like he'd turned things around, but nope. 7936. judithathome - 11/24/2005 12:49:05 AM I was friends with his first ex-wife, the one that never makes the biographies because she insisted on it, and the stuff she tells about him is chilling. She was only 17 when they married and both of them were too young but his abuse lasted long after they were divorced and their daughter only agreed to have contact with him after she was grown and had had years of therapy. He's a shitheel and that doesn't change. 7937. uzmakk - 11/24/2005 1:00:02 AM Well, I don't know about all that, but I do remember the great Hartford, Campbell, NBC Debate.
Wrt, Bono's music vs activism. He was asked which he would be remembered for and he said, the music. I don't know about that. 7938. alistairconnor - 11/24/2005 10:46:02 AM Well, the first U2 album sticks in my mind : Boy. Very distinctive, finely etched, rather mannered and precious. In my opinion, it contains everything that is original or interesting in their work, and it was made about 25 years ago. I recommend it.
Memorable songs:
I will follow
Shadows and tall trees 7939. Macnas - 11/24/2005 1:30:03 PM I like the early stuff best too. I don't own a single recording of U2's, but I'll cock an ear to them if they are on the wireless.
Likes:
Fire
Out of Control
Electric Co
11 O'Clock Tick Tock
Party Girl
I also really like "bullet the blue sky", but find most of the Joshua Tree really pretentious.
I did see them live once, many many years ago, just as they started to sell records here at home. Have to say, they had (might still have) that spark that makes you want to join in. 7940. wonkers2 - 11/27/2005 3:42:58 AM Anybody read anything by Jonathan Safran Foer? On the way back from DC we listened to the book tape of his novel "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close" which was quite well acted (read). The book is a quite imaginative tale starting with a precocious boy whose father was killed in the World Trade Center and whose grandfather lost the love of his life in the bombing of Dresden. A brief account by a man's loss of his daughter in Hiroshima ties in a third tragedy for comparison. Foer is one of the most imaginative authors I've ever read, including Garcia Marquez.
Salman Rushdie is quoted in the blurb on the cover as follows "Jonathan Safran Foer's second novel is everything one hoped it would be--ambitious, pyrotechnic, riddling, and above all...extremely moving. An exceptional achievement." Another of his novels, "Everything Illuminated," was made into a movie which listening to "Extremely Loud..." made me want to see. I'd be interested in anybody else's reaction to Foer.
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